Does God Hate Me If I Am Divorced?

A friend e-mailed me with some questions about divorce. Here are their questions in quotes, with my responses in bullets.

"For those of us who are Christians and have been divorced (either initiated by us or not) how would you respond to someone who says, "Does God hate me because I have been through a divorce?""

• The answer to this is: No. God loves you. God’s love does not go up and down with our performance.
• Does God hate divorce? Yes. And it is good that he does. A divorce is not only a failure, but also a breaking of a covenant made before God. One promises to stay together for all of life, until one dies, through better or worse. The results of the ripping apart of what God has “welded” together are devastating. See Mark 10:9, where the word for “joined together” is, literally, “welded together.” (A Wedding is a Welding.)Tear it apart and there’s damage to both welded pieces. And, there’s damage to the children. Anyone who thinks “The kids will be OK” is living in denial-la-la-land. See, e.g., Judith Wallenstein’s The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce. No wonder God hates divorce!
• “Worse” times happen in every marriage. Every marriage has conflict. Every marriage faces stress and struggle and pain and misunderstanding and setbacks and letdowns and so on.
• In premarital counseling I use the FOCCUS material. I think it’s excellent, providing a premarital MRI of the relationship’s areas of strength and weakness, agreement and disagreement. As long as a person doesn’t lie on the FOCCUS inventory (which has happened), I feel we can greatly strengthen and prepare premarital couples for both better and worse.

“My first wife filed for divorce and I am now married to another woman. It seems when I hear people speak of divorce, they mention it in the negative. I am not in agreement with divorce; however, one spouse can't make another spouse remain in the marriage. My first wife chose to leave because we clashed or butted heads all the time. While I was willing to work it out, she was not. I think there are situations like mine where one person wants to stay but the other chooses to leave and they become marked with the "divorce" tag.”

• If one person chooses to divorce there’s not much the other can do about it. It was good that you tried to save the marriage. There was nothing intrinsically unsavable about your first marriage. It is a given that, in marriage, husband and wife will “butt heads.” Opposites, which first attracted, now repel and come against each other. You will never find a marriage where this does not happen.
• I think divorce is always negative. As a divorcee you can agree with that. It was painful for you. But, as I said above, God has not ceased loving you, and his plans and purposes have not been stripped away from you.

“One problem I have with that label is that in some cases it can't be fixed. If I cheat on my wife, I can stop doing that. If I lie and steal, I can stop doing that. I can't stop being a divorced person if my spouse refuses to be married to me. As a Christian, when we talk about grace and mercy for sins, doesn't that apply to divorce also?”

• I have never seen a troubled marriage that cannot be fixed. Ever. I’m talking about, probably, a thousand or so over my forty-four years of ministry. Surely one doesn’t want to say  there are marriages God is powerless to repair? But it does take two persons to agree to get help. Usually both persons are 100% responsible for the marital problems. I suggest viewing it that way. If husband and wife are broken by their own failures that contribute to the marriage mess, then I feel we have a marriage that can be saved.
• Yes, of course, grace and mercy applies to divorce. I don’t know what it would mean to say that they do not apply.

"If everyone in your congregation who was divorced came up to you and asked how could they rectify it, what would you say?"
• If persons are contemplating divorce, see some things I have written here.
• If they are legally divorced and want to correct the relationship, I am all for doing that, with God’s help. I think God is pleased when that happens.
• And, finally, we have seen some divorced couples get remarried with wonderful results! To study this, one of the best resources is Remarriage after Divorce in Today's Church: Three Views (one of which is by Craig Keener).

Dr. John Piippo - How God Changes the Human Heart

I'm re-posting this to keep it in play. (Thank you again Carol.)

REMEMBER

(I wrote these reminders to myself many years ago. I put them on an email, and sent the email to myself, periodically. I called it "REMEMBER." Because I can forget. I'm posting this, mostly for myself.)

Be myself. Be who God made me to be, with all my strengths and infirmities.    

Overcome fear & intimidation.

Overcome denial.

Overcome addiction

Do not compare...

Stimulate the mind with intellectually challenging reading.

 

Physically exercise

Get outside and ponder God's creation

Listen to excellent music

Write beautiful worship songs

Remember blessings

Enjoy Linda, Dan, Josh, Levi, Harper

God works all things together for good!

Live in gratitude

Remember - you're not alone

Eat well

Pray about struggles

Enter deeply into God's presence

Know the Father's love

Play the guitar

Lead worship with passion

Preach with passion and excellence

Teach brilliantly

Laugh

Don't lose your joy

Lead with confidence

Mentor with great discernment...

Counsel others

Write the books

Take beautiful photographs

Love others deeply

Physics and Philosophy of Time

(I have aged. Linda has not.)

(I'm re-posting this for a friend.)

I am seventy-four years old. Where has the time gone!? And what, anyway, is "time?" 

Here are some thoughts. For more you might read Now: The Physics of Time, by Berkeley physicist Richard Muller, and Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation, by Alan Burdick. Especially helpful is God and Time: Four Views. 

Scientific American as published several essays on the nature of time -  A Question of Time: The Ultimate Paradox. One of my favorite physicists, Paul Davies, has an essay called "That Mysterious Flow." Here are some of his thoughts on time.

"Nothing in known physics corresponds to the passage of time. Indeed, physicists insist that time doesn’t flow at all; it merely is."

Our commonsense view is that time is "slipping away." It feels like there is a "flow" to time. However, Einstein said, “The past, present and future are only illusions, even if stubborn ones.”

Davies writes: "Physicists prefer to think of time as laid out in its entirety— a timescape, analogous to a landscape— with all past and future events located there together. It is a notion sometimes referred to as block time. Completely absent from this description of nature is anything that singles out a privileged, special moment as the present or any process that would systematically turn future events into present, then past, events. In short, the time of the physicist does not pass or flow."

Time is just as real as space, but "the flow of time" is unreal. 

Time is unidirectional. For example, an egg dropped on the floor will break into pieces. But the reverse process - a broken egg spontaneously assembling itself into an intact egg - is never witnessed. "Nature abounds with irreversible processes." But there is no "arrow of time." Yes, time is unidirectional, but...

..."this does not imply, however, that the arrow is moving toward the future, any more than a compass needle pointing north indicates that the compass is traveling north. Both arrows symbolize an asymmetry, not a movement. The arrow of time denotes an asymmetry of the world in time, not an asymmetry or flux of time. The labels “past” and “future” may legitimately be applied to temporal directions, just as “up” and “down” may be applied to spatial directions, but talk of the past or the future is as meaningless as referring to the up or the down."

Remember - this is physics. We may feel some flow of time, but in reality time is not something that moves or flows. 

Note this: We do not really observe the passage of time. "What we actually observe is that later states of the world differ from earlier states that we still remember. The fact that we remember the past, rather than the future, is an observation not of the passage of time but of the asymmetry of time." Think of individual movie frames. As we watch a movie we experience individual states of affairs that are different from previously experienced states of affairs. That's all.

Think again of the "broken egg" example. Imagine a movie of the egg being dropped on the floor and breaking. Then imagine the film sequence being run backwards. We would see that the backwards sequence was unreal, even though there would seem to be a "flow" to the backwards series. This shows the illusion of the "flow of time." Yes, time is asymmetrical, but "time’s asymmetry is actually a property of states of the world, not a property of time as such."

When I remember the past and the many birthdays I have already celebrated, but do not remember the future birthdays that (hopefully) are forthcoming, this is "an observation not of the passage of time but of the asymmetry of time." Note: only conscious observers register the "flow of time." "Therefore, it appears that the flow of time is subjective, not objective."

I think the biblical distinction between chronos and kairos may help us here. Chronos is "clock time," and the experience of a flow of time. But kairos is more like a discrete, individual frame in a movie isolated from all other events. Kairos is the "right time," or the "appointed time." 

All of this is good news for me. Time has really not "passed me by." Time is not "slippin', slippin', slippin'... into the future."  

Davies writes: 

"What if science were able to explain away the flow of time? Perhaps we would no longer fret about the future or grieve for the past. Worries about death might become as irrelevant as worries about birth. Expectation and nostalgia might cease to be part of human vocabulary. Above all, the sense of urgency that attaches to so much of human activity might evaporate."


*** 
Here's a review of some philosophical ideas about time. (Special thanks to Manuel Velazquez's excellent Philosophy: A Text With Readings, 11th edition)

PLATO (Ancient Greek philosopher, 429-347 BCE)

• "Time" exists independently of events that occur in time.
• "Time is like an empty container into which things and events may be placed; but it is a container that exists independently of what (if anything) is placed in it." (SEP) 

ARISTOTLE (Ancient greek philosopher, 384-322 BCE)

• Time does not exist independently, contra Plato, of the events that occur in time.
• This view is called "Reductionism with Respect to Time."
• This means that "all talk that appears to be about time can somehow be reduced to talk about temporal relations among things and events." (SEP)
• The idea of a period of time without change is seen as incoherent.
• Thus "time" cannot exist independently of what is placed in it. Apart from events, no time exists.

AUGUSTINE (Augustine of Hippo, 354-430)

• Time, in a sense, does not exist.
• The past no longer exists.
• The future does not yet exist.
• Only the present moment is real.
• But the present moment has, in itself, neither a past nor a future.
• The present moment is timeless.
• "Time," from God's perspective, is different from our perspective.
• God is outside of time.
• Time is like a line of events stretched out before God.
• Every moment - past, present, and future - lies on this line. Everything on the "line of time" is fixed. This is God's perspective. (Cmp. C.S. Lewis who, in Mere Christianity, employed Augustine's view of time.)

McTAGGERT (British philosopher M.E. McTaggert, 1886-1925)

• Compare McTaggert to Davies, who cites McTaggert in his essay.
• The flow of time as we experience it is unreal.
• "Time" is a fixed series of moments, each moment either "before" or "after" the other moments. This is "objective time."
• We can also think of "time" as a sequence of flowing moments. Each moment changes or flows from "future" to "present" to "past." This is "subjective time."
• "Past," "present," and "future" are incompatible with each other. Therefore it is impossible for the same thing (viz., the same "moment") to be simultaneously future, present, and past.
• But if time did "flow," then every moment would have to be future, and then present, and then past.
• So the idea of subjective time as a sequence of flowing moments is unreal.
• Subjective time is unreal. Our experience of time as "passing" is an illusion.
• Following this McTaggert said, "I believe that nothing that exists can be temporal, and that therefore time [subjective] is unreal." (The Nature of Existence)
• "Time" is an unchanging, fixed series of events frozen onto the "line of time" that makes up the series. But this is not really time, because there is no flow or change here. And, since subjective time is unreal, time cannot be real.

KANT (German philosopher Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804)

• Time - whether subjective or objective - is simply a construct of the human mind.
• "Time" and "space" are categories of the mind that the mind uses to organize the flow of changing sensations.
• Kant said, "Time is therefore given a priori." "Time" as a mental category is "prior to experience" and organizes or categorizes experience.
• Time is not real but is a mental construct.

HUSSERL (German phenomenological philosopher, 1859-1938)

• See Husserl's The Phenomenology of Internal Time Consciousness.
• Husserl is in the Kantian stream of thinking. He is not interested in the metaphysical status of time, but time as transcendental, as lying at the base of consciousness, and giving shape to our experience. 
• Husserl "considers the present, past, and future as modes of appearing or modes by which we experience things and events as now, no longer (past) or not yet (future)." (IEP)

BERGSON (French philosopher Henri Bergson, 1859-1941)

• "Objective time," the "time" of the scientist, is just a conceptual abstraction, a construct of the mind.
• The image of time as a line is simply an image; the concept of objective time is only a concept. Neither images nor concepts can get at the reality.
• Only what we directly experience is real; viz., what we "intuit."
• We directly experience or intuit the flow of time. Bergson says we have the "intuition of duration."
• Real time is subjective time. This is the "flow of time" that I experience moving from future, through present, and into the past.
• Objective time is an intellectual reconstruction and thus is an illusion."Time" does not actually exist "out there" in the world (it's not a reality transcendent to human subjectivity).

WILLIAM LANE CRAIG (Christian theist, 1947 - present)

• Apart from events time does not exist.
• Prior to creation time did not exist.
• A personal God need not experience a temporal succession of mental events. "God could know the content of all knowledge - past, present, and future - in a simultaneous and eternal intuition." (See Craig, "God, Time, and Eternity")
• "The proper understanding of God, time, and eternity would be that God exists changelessly and timelessly prior to creation and in time after creation."
• There are no "events" prior to creation. Therefore, since God exists prior to creation and is an "eventless" being, "time" does not exist prior to creation. At the creation of the universe time begins. On a relational view of time God now relates to the universe, "and God subjects himself to time by being related to changing things."

STEPHEN HAWKING (Physicist, author of A Brief History of Time, 1942-present)

• Time is understood in relation to events. Hawking writes: 
• 
  
• "Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang are simply not defined, because there's no way one could measure what happened at them... [T]he universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time would have been a singularity at which the laws of physics would have broken down." (See here) 

(For diagram + explanation, see here.)

FOR MORE READING: God and Time: Four Views. 

And: W.L. Craig, "God, Time, and Eternity"

***


In my book Praying: Reflections on 40 Years of Solitary Conversations with God I write about hearing and discerning the voice of God and not much about time. But subjectively praying brings us into kairos moments, felt timeless experiences that are nondirectional because one's heart has arrived in the presence of God.

Jesus is God and Man

(Nicole and Josh)

Back in the 1970s I read German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg's magnum opus, Jesus: God and Man. I was so inspired by Pannenberg's study, especially his analysis of the resurrection of Christ and the language we use to speak of it, that I incorporated his thinking into my doctoral dissertation. 

My studies began focusing more and more on the matter of the nature of Christ, and led to a doctoral qualifying exam on what the early Church Fathers said about Christ as both divine and human, and the eventual development of the monumental Christological Creeds. (See, e.g., J.N.D. Kelly's Early Christian Doctrines and Early Christian Creeds.)

I grew up in a Lutheran Church (ELCA), and on Sunday mornings we recited The Nicene Creed. The word "creed" is from the Latin word credo, which means "I believe." The Nicene Creed begins with "We believe..." 

It reads:

We believe in one God,

the Father, the Almighty,

maker of heaven and earth,

of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

eternally begotten of the Father,

God from God, Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made of one Being with the Father.

Through him all things were made.

For us and for our salvation

he came down from heaven:

by the power of the Holy Spirit

he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,

and was made man.

As I read this today, I see that I still believe it, more than ever. In Jesus, true God was made human. Here's a brief look at this.

Jesus is True God

In the four Gospels we see many places where Jesus acts like he is God, and even claims to be God. This is recognized by the religious leaders, who accuse him of claiming to be divine. They pick up stones to throw at him, viewing his claim as blasphemous.

For example, Jesus claims to forgive sins. From the ancient Jewish point of view, only God can do this. 

Imagine you are in a heated conflict with someone. I walk by, see you arguing, and invite myself into the mess. I raise my hands before you both and say, "Why not use some conflict resolution, some anger management techniques, to work this thing out?" Presumably, you would not have a problem with me saying that. 

But, if I said to you, "I forgive you both for acting this way," you would wonder, "Does John think he is God?" 

The religious leaders asked, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Jesus walked around doing that. He went to a bloody death because of that, and to accomplish that. Jesus was speaking and acting as if he were God.

N.T. Wright explains the God-thing about forgiving sins in his excellent book Simply Jesus. Wright writes:

"How does God normally forgive sins within Israel? Why, through the Temple and the sacrifices that take place there. Jesus seems to be claiming that God is doing, up close and personal through him, something that you’d normally expect to happen at the Temple. And the Temple— the successor to the tabernacle in the desert— was, as we saw, the place where heaven and earth met. It was the place where God lived. Or, more precisely, the place on earth where God’s presence intersected with human, this-worldly reality." (Wright, N. T., Simply Jesus: A New Vision of Who He Was, What He Did, and Why He Matters, pp. 79-80)

There are many examples in Scripture where Jesus acts like he is God. He claims such an intimate relationship with the Father that it causes the religious leaders to accuse him of making himself equal with God. For example, Jesus said, "I and the Father are one." Their accusations were on target. In Jesus, God's presence intersected with earth in the form of humanity.

Jesus is Human - The Humanity of Jesus

For this reason he had to be made like them, 

fully human in every way, 

in order that he might become 

a merciful and faithful high priest 

in service to God, 

and that he might make atonement 

for the sins of the people. 

Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

- Hebrews 2:17-18

"What if God was one of us? 

Just a slob like one of us?"

- Joan Osborne

Jesus is fully and completely human. He was conceived in a human womb. He had a physical, human body, like we have. Jesus got tired (John 4:6), hungry (Matt. 4:2), and thirsty (John 19:28).

Jesus went through a learning process, as we do. We read: 

And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, 

and in favor with God and man. 

(Luke 2:52)

Jesus felt the spectrum of different emotions, as we do. He marveled (Matt. 8:10), he wept (Jon 11:35), and he was inwardly troubled (Matt. 26:38; John 12:27).

Jesus was like us in every way, except one. He was without sin (1 Peter 2:22).

OK. Jesus was fully God. But why did he have to also be fully human? Wayne Grudem writes: 

"Jesus had to be fully human to serve as our perfectly obedient representative... If Jesus wasn't fully human, his obedience in our place would be meaningless. Just as Jesus had to be human to live in our place, he had to be human to die in our place."

Hebrews 2:17 says: 

It’s obvious, of course, 

that he didn’t go to all this trouble for angels. 

It was for people like us, children of Abraham. 

That’s why he had to enter into 

every detail of human life. 

Then, when he came before God as high priest 

to get rid of the people’s sins, 

he would have already experienced it all himself—

all the pain, all the testing—

and would be able to help 

where help was needed. 

(The Message)

And, the beautiful words of Hebrews 4:15:

 We don’t have a priest 

who is out of touch with our reality. 

He’s been through weakness and testing, 

experienced it all—

all but the sin. 

So let’s walk right up to him 

and get what he is so ready to give. 

Take the mercy, accept the help. 

(The Message)

In Jesus, full God-ness, and full human-ness, converge. The everlasting, world-creating Word became flesh, and pitched his tent among us.

That's Christmas.

I believe in one Lord, 

Jesus Christ, 

true God from true God, 

who came down from heaven,

and was made man.